Monday, November 30, 2009

I finished up Wintertide Sampler over the weekend. I think it really turned out cute. It's amazing how the photos on these charts never do them justice. And I love working on band samplers. I have several more in my stash and I can't wait to get to them.

Over the past couple of weeks I've felt like getting out some quilting. After spending hours and hours looking at all the new stuff online and in stores, I went into my stash and pulled out some stuff that I have in progress. First up is a baby quilt that needed to be done 18 months ago as baby Ernie is now 18 months old. :-) And his little sister is due to arrive in January. :-) I don't even remember the inspiration for this top - I took bits and pieces from other patterns. It actually started out as a dog bed but when I was done it just looked so much like a baby quilt that I put it aside and picked out other fabrics for my dog bed. And I knew I would use it at some point as a baby quilt and many of my nephews and nieces are in that age group where they are having babies. I'm going to send this one out I think to be quilted as I'm not very good yet and very, very rusty in any case.

I have a couple of others that I think I'm going to work on the weekend's in the coming months. I must have a dozen or so that are kitted, cut out or partially sown together. And of course about a half dozen that are tops that need to be quilted. Some I put together just to practice my machine quilting skills. I think I'll take a stab at some of those also.

Here is my new start - Evergreen Loose Feathers #17 by Blackbird Designs. I love getting to these older Loose Feathers! This will be a Christmas pillow when I finished with it. I also have Peace on Earth ready to go. And I'm looking for Winter Delivery #5 and And To All A Good Night #11.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

There hasn't been a lot of stitching going on. I've been sleeping on the train and at night, well, I just haven't felt the mojo. :-) I do hope to finish Wintertide Sampler before the day is out however. I have no plans to cook today and I'm still debating on whether or not I should take one of the seven offers for dinner today that have come my way. I would rather watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy (a Thanksgiving Day tradition for me) and eat a frozen cheese pizza. I have not had a cheese pizza for over a year now and I'm dying for one. :-) In my book, cheese pizza beats out turkey any day of the week!

Here is a series of photos from Aoife's last agility trial. I love to watch progression photos. :-) And I also loaded a ton more agility videos - the link to my YouTube account is to the left if you care to check them out. There is a really nice one of Clancy from our last outdoor trial of the season. He was booking. :-)

Monday, November 23, 2009

I had a pretty quiet weekend and that's the way I wanted it. :-) I didn't much stitching done but I did get a lot of nice laying around done. I'm over half way finished with Wintertide Sampler and I hope to be finished by the weekend. No major plans for Thanksgiving. Just friends and family and I'm not cooking. And all the shopping I want to do on Friday is just for me. :-) I like that too!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Here is Wintertide Sampler. I found an issue with this chart and while charted incorrectly (in my option), I really should have noticed it before I started stitching. The band right beneath the words, advent's nigh was charted one row shorter than it should have been so when I got the the g in nigh, the pulled work was right on it. And because it was a pulled row, I knew I could not take it out without the pulls showing. So I left it in. I'll be sure to watch for that sort of thing as I work through my stash of SB charts as I now have a ton of them. :-) Things like this drive me crazy.

The weather is firmly on the chilly side now and I have a feeling that winter proper is not far behind. And I still don't have a winter coat! Because of my weight loss, I have had to replace all my clothes and the coats have been left to last. But I need at least two - one for the days that get to a low of around 30 or so and a long down coat for the really cold days - the ones that are below zero. I'll start with the shorter one first and hopefully find a nice down one on sale. I'm thinking that the Thanksgiving sales might work out well for shopping. :-)

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Here is the finish photo for my Quaker Heart. I love how it turned out. I think I would like to make this into something rather than frame it but I don't know what yet. A heart shaped box would be pretty with this as the lid. :-)

Time to move my hoop on Wintertide Sampler. No time for stitching tonight as it's agility night and I need to go to work on some issues with both the pugs. :-)

Monday, November 16, 2009

TWO first first place finishes for my Aoife! She was rocking over the weekend. I'm such a proud mom. She got a first place on Saturday in FAST (and by my figuring had the best FAST finish among all 78 dogs) and a first place on Sunday in Jumpers with Weaves. On her other four runs she was super fast but had a lot of consistency issues. It's mostly baby dog things and there is benefit to these things happening because now I know what to train and where our gaps are. Our next trial is December 3rd through the 6th. Both Aoife and Clancy have runs all four days. I have two and a half weeks to work on some stuff. It's kinda funny, right now it's the same sort of issues for both of them - weave pole entries and table issues. I sure hope she didn't learn these from him! :-)

I didn't have a ton of time for stitching but here is my new start - Wintertide Sampler from Shepherd's Bush. I LOVE to work on band samplers but I had forgotten how much. Kinda like I forgot how much I love to stitch Shepherd's Bush pieces. This is going to go quick I think. Last night I took some time to go through my stash and look for holiday/winter pieces. I want to make a couple of pillows for my couch like I have for fall/Halloween and make a ton of ornaments. I'll start on everything I pulled out when this is finished. I'm in the mood for winter stuff. :-) Because of all the money I'll be spending on my Thistle Threads University pieces next year I'll be pulling from my stash a lot in the coming months. But that's a good thing - I love everything in my stash that is ready to go. :-) And I'm excited to get to some of them.

I did finish Quaker Heart last Friday but never had time to take a final photo. I'll post it tomorrow for sure. :-)

Friday, November 13, 2009

I'm almost finished with Quaker Heart - there is a really funny looking jog on the outline of the heart that I wish I would have seen before I got to it. I would have "fixed" it before I got that far. To my eye it looks like I made a mistake but I stitched it the way it was charted. It's driving me crazy but here is no way I'm going to pull out as much stitching that I would need to fix it. I'll just have to figure out a way to live with it. I would have finished it last night but we had to take my mom back to the hospital. :-( I'll finish up on the way home from work but I didn't bring a backup project so I'll be napping for sure.

As I mentioned Mom went back to the hospital for a couple of hours last night. She started to throw up in the afternoon and when I got home from work my dad was in a tizzy. I called my sister and we very quickly decided not to mess around at all. My sister called a family friend who is a doctor with one of the local hospitals and he agreed to take over her care. So we spent a couple of hours while they pumped her full of fluids. Her blood work was ok but more tests are coming. They sent her home but we should know more today about what is going on.

This weekend Aoife and I have her second agility trial. This one is Saturday and Sunday so we have six chances for a ribbon. Wish us luck! We are going to need it, between vacations and my mom we have done almost no training and are very rusty. My goals are very simple for the weekend. Just have fun with my dog and be proud of her no matter what.

Have a great weekend! I hope to get caught up with blog reading this weekend. But with the hundreds of posts I have to read I think there is little chance of that.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Here is my progress on Quaker Heart - it's moving along nicely. I need to start back on my Houses of Hawk Run Hollow soon. If I push hard I know I can have it done by the end of the year as planned. I also want to start on some ornaments both for gifts and for me. I didn't make myself a single one last year and I'd like to make up for it this year. I only liked a couple from this year's Just Cross Stitch issue but I have many from past years that I still want to do.

Did you see this? It's the Thistle Threads Online University for Historic Embroidery Techniques. I have been wanted to learn how to do this sort embroidery for some time now. I have to admit I went a little crazy and signed up for all three. That is my stitching budget for an entire year! But I can't wait to get started. :-)

Thanks for all the commiseration over the wedding video. My friend Peggy does have a geek friend who is going to take a look at it. When I did further research I kept reading that if you manage to pull a deleted file from the hard drive, it doesn't play correctly. My video recorder records with a 16:9 ratio and if the files can be finagled off the drive they always show up in 4:3 ratio which squishes the video. But I figure at least we will have something to work with and maybe find some sort of file conversion program that will move it back to 16:9. At least I have a glimmer of hope at this point.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I started on Quaker Heart by Shepherd's Bush before I left Jamacia but didn't get much done. This is going to go quick I think.

I got back into town late Monday evening. And nothing has gone right - starting from my first flight home. At the airport in Montego Bay, airport security didn't like the size of my Dovos so they confiscated my favorite and most expensive pair of scissors. I'm heartbroke over it. But I figure just because they were fine for US security they would be ok for everyone else. Far from it. And they didn't have a system in place to send them to me like TSA has here. They are just gone.

Then I worked from home on Tuesday and the bucket full of work waiting me was huge. As of now, I really haven't even made that much of a dent in it.

But here is the real killer - before I started work on Tuesday I needed to download the video I took of the wedding last Saturday. I wanted to get it to my friend Peggy before my work day started. I had a ton of old agility videos on it and I wanted to clean it up before I uploaded to YouTube. I already have a feeling that many of you know where this is going. Somehow when I was scrolling through the videos, I went from the oldest to the newest and I accidentally deleted the wedding. My video camera is a pretty new JVC and it has a hard drive. According to all the information I have been able to find both from the manuals and online, once you delete something from the hard drive on this model it's gone forever. But I did try to load several recovery programs and none of them could recover the video. I'm just sick over it. It was the only video the bride and groom had. Then a couple of hours later I was cleaning up my hard drive on my laptop and guess what? I deleted all my photos! Not only from my photo file but also from the recycle bin. I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. All my stitching not to mention pug photos are gone. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

I finished up As the Crow Flies today while sitting at the pool. Such a pretty day. The wedding is tonight and I'll be getting ready shortly. It's on the beach and we watched a different wedding yesterday and it was so pretty so I'm sure Katie's will be just as beautiful. :-) I love the dress I brought and I'll make sure to post a photo of me and the Mother of the Bride (my friend Peggy).

Monday, November 02, 2009

I really didn't feel like stitching on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow so I went through my stash and pulled out this guy! It's As the Crow Flies from Stone & Thread. I've had a couple of charts from this designer for over a year now and this is the first I've done. I really like it and it's a nice change of pace from what I've been stitching lately. I plan on taking this and a couple of Shepherd's Bush kits along with me on vacation. Speaking of vacation, I have a ton to do at work - way more to do than I have hours and I need to cook more before I leave so Mom has lots of good, healthy food to eat while I'm gone. My Dad considers canned soup a meal but right now Mom needs much more than that. I spent most of the weekend making meals and freezing them and I'll try to cook a bit more tonight or tomorrow. And I have to find time to pack. Right now I don't know how I'll get it all done. Oh and I have agility class with the pugs tomorrow also.

Thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes! I had a great one even if I felt a bit like Cinderella with all the cooking and cleaning I had to do. :-)